Het Testament
Het Testament ("The will") is a Dutch one act play adapted "from the French" by an anonymous translator.
The play is ascribed to a "P. van der Velde" by F.C.L. Bosman (1980).
The original text
The origins of the play are somewhat obscure, but there are two 19th century French plays called Le Testament, and though this play may be a translation and/or adaptation of either (see Le Testament), the Van der Velde work is more likely to be a Dutch version of L'Héritière (1834), a "comédie-vaudeville" by Augustin Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne.
See L'Héritière
A more unlikely source for this play is the five act melodrama Het Testament, of De Geheimen van Udolpho (1801), a Dutch version of Montoni, ou Le Chateau d'Udolphe (Radcliffe/Duval).
Performance history in South Africa
1870: According to Bosman (1980), a one act play called Het Testament (by a "P. van der Velde") was performed in Dutch in the Germania Hall, Cape Town, by Aurora II on 9 August, with Twee Emmers Water ().
Sources
Facsimile version of the original published text of 1823, Internet Archive[1]
Facsimile version of the original published text, Google E-book[2]
Facsimile version of the 1834 Dutch text of Het Testament of , Google E-book[3]
Gerd Aage Gillhoff. 2013. The Royal Dutch Theatre at the Hague 1804–1876. Springer, p. 176[4]
Facsimile version of Le Testament in the Oeuvres de Monsiour De Fontenelle, Google E-book[5]
Facsimile version of the 1797 edition of Le Testament, Google E-book[6]
F.C.L. Bosman. 1980. Drama en Toneel in Suid-Afrika, Deel II, 1856-1912. Pretoria: J.L. van Schaik: p. 465.
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